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Ten secrets of good relationships..
LotStreetWiz has arrived safely in Vancouver and made it to the hotel. There’s sloppy snow on the streets. In Toronto, it’s raining steadily. I’m about to go downstairs and see if my patches to the cellar walls are waterproof.
As autumn gets colder and wetter, I’ve taken to waving cat toys when the cats come into the room, so they’ve taken to perching on the furniture and watching me intently, obviously expecting some entertainment.
We had our granddaughter in Toronto for the weekend. She had a short visit with her dad on Saturday afternoon, but he had forgotten it was her weekend and was hosting a party that evening and working on Sunday. Work is good.
On Saturday evening we picked up a possible Hallowe’en outfit for her at Value Village, a for-profit thrift store that stocks new and used costumes for Hallowe’en. On Sunday we went back to Value Village for a very nice charcoal-grey satin formal that was just a little big for her but should be perfect about the time she graduates from elementary school.
On Sunday morning LotStreetWiz headed out for an 8-hour bike ride with only two protein bars in his pocket. If biking burns off a few hundred calories per hour, you have to eat more than that to stay caught up! Eating enough to stay fuelled is one of the challenges of the longer triathlons. After dropping off our grand-daughter, I drove on and picked him up in Niagara Falls, rather cold and tired but triumphant at riding 100 miles.
Today we had a fun ride. LotStreetWiz, AtheticKid, SilentLight, and I all biked down to the Leslie Street Spit, around the outer road (three times for L & A), and back again. We put in about 17 miles plus a few extra for our athletes. We took the Don Trail both ways to find a gentler slope. I generally brought up the rear. At the entrance to the park SilentLight and I hung back to have something to eat. I felt more energetic after that.
The Spit had a community event with nature lookout points and bird boxes for swallows or perhaps bluebirds. Apparently it was part of Doors Open Toronto. At our turnaround point, just before the road turns to gravel, there was a display including some bird skins, so we were able to compare herring gulls, ring-billed gulls (a little smaller), and common terns (a lot smaller). We learned that a pair of great egrets are nesting, or at least hanging around, past our turnaround. That was about our only stop as the emphasis was on letting AthleticKid get in some training time.
still, we saw a lot of birds: cormorants, Canada Geese, gulls, terns, swallows–barn swallows?–and lots of smaller ones. We heard a lot of robins. The red-winged blackbirds are everywhere.
The beaver lodge in the big pond is higher and we saw freshly gnawed and felled trees back by the park entrance. So either there are two beavers with different territories or one wandering animal.
Swim workout with Lizbot and LotStreetWiz, in 25-metre pool at the St. Lawrence Community Centre, overseen by Coach Kelvin of Oannes Swims, about 75 minutes:
Total, 1550 m.
more funny cats
This was a day for errands: physical exam, blood test, buy cold medicines for LotStreetWiz. Home, make lunch; short break. Off to Pilates. On way home, shop for groceries; then buy more cold medicine.
